Russia's Yandex to Shut Down in Turkey 

The Russian tech giant "Yandex", founded to compete with Google, has decided to close its offices in Turkey, Marketing Türkiye reported.

Yandex, which has e-commerce, navigation, mobile applications and marketing operations in Turkey, will continue its operation from the company's headquarters in Russia, and close it Turkey's offices.

Yandex Turkey remained profitable with the son-in-law of the Turkish media mogul Mehmet Ali Yalçindag, a businessman close to the Turkish government, while the company's global revenues declined in the past six months due to the continuing spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

This closure decision coincides with Turkey's new social media bill that will go into effect. The Turkish offices will be closed in October, as part of Yandex global measures.

Starting October 1, all social media platforms will be required to appoint legal representatives in Turkey and open offices to facilitate the Turkish government's demands to remove content.

Non-abiding companies will face fines of up to $1.5 million, ad bans, and bandwidth throttling of up to 90%.

A government official said that in July, after the law was passed, all major players in the industry accepted Turkey's terms, except for Twitter, which had not responded at the time.

On the other hand, Google has offices in Turkey, since 2006, for advertising and marketing operations only.

The company announced in August that it would implement several structural reforms for 2021, yet the changes are not related to social media regulations.